This present invention relates to methods of processing payment and more specifically to a method of obtaining payment information using an imaging barcode scanner.
A typical method of processing payment is by reading a magnetic stripe on card, such as a credit, debit, gift, or electronic benefit transfer (food stamp) card by a card reader. A card reader may also read a loyalty card during a payment process to ensure rewards, discounts, and other incentives are credited to a customer.
However, some cards may not be readable after their magnetic stripes are damaged. In this situation, card data must be entered using a keyboard. Key-entering card data is a time consuming process. When the customer is performing a purchase transaction at a self-checkout station, the checkout software running on the self-checkout station may require an attendant to come over and manually enter the card data, which both lengthens the purchase transaction and ties up the attendant.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method of obtaining payment information using an imaging barcode reader.